From 1199463127668376300 X-Google-Thread: f78e5,6294651cbc4b105c X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.speakeasy.net!news.speakeasy.net.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:20:07 -0500 Return-Path: X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) Delivered-To: std-c++@ucar.edu From: kanze@gabi-soft.fr Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: C++ standard life cycle Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1125404095.109890.161740@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> References: <1125063434.798372.40210@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <9gHPe.799$5k1.691@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020920 Netscape/7.0,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com; posting-host=62.160.54.162; posting-account=qsfl8gwAAABZGaLp2a7FeTfDkJamzWYW X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ucar.edu Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mailman.ucar.edu id j7UCF8NC029811 X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU Approved: Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++ X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 09:11:26 CST Lines: 107 NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.182.171.162 X-Trace: sv3-TiPbN+CGsgBAij5awe2ELJkknbUiJLn2miz4UmyfoqjlykNN0k62Ey2/754oJY85BKmVyZPP70GUAi9!YVm7jdJszwDmcwvseqC040hRyGTiCFSQAXTt3dpX0bV7gV7PADu2fjS0ihKC4lnfjzuWjJS5rtw+!qjfqjJI6T8x2AIBTtQEVjN742D0X818N2t79wAz/eR4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.std.c++:1977 John Nagle wrote: > Tony Delroy wrote: > >>There's probably one more major revision cycle left in [C++] > >>the lifespan. > > COBOL and FORTRAN stand out as having been core parts of > > corporate and governmental financial and engineering > > systems, while in my experience Pascal is typically employed > > in Universities and PCs. > Pascal was the first major language in microcomputing. > The personal computer revolution was powered by Pascal. I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. The personal computer revolution was powered by application software: VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3 and WordStar, mostly. And almost all of the PC application software was written in assembler. On early personal computers, if a programming language was present, 9 times out of 10, it was a dialect of Basic. > The DOS machines used Borland's Turbo Pascal (which, > significantly, was nothing like the ISO standard), and > Lisa/Macintosh machines used several varieties of Pascal, some > with object-oriented extensions. Turbo Pascal didn't appear until long after the PC had established itself. Microsoft and at least one other company had Pascal offerings before that, but they weren't widely used. > The standards community was never able to get together on > a usable version of Pascal for systems programming. Wirth was > off doing Modula and Oberon, the ISO standarized version was > too restrictive (it couldn't even handle an I/O error), and no > organization took on the standards effort. The real problem was that the standardization committee for Pascal was unable to build a consensus on how to handle separate compilation. By the time standardization was in progress, there were a number of implementations, all of which supported some form of separate compilation, but none compatible. > And that killed the language. It wasn't a technical problem. The lack of a portable dialect certainly played a role in killing the language as such. Although in another sense, it isn't dead; it has just changed its name. Both Pascal and Basic live on in the hands of a single supplier (Borland and Microsoft). A fact which, of course, eliminates the dialect problem, and makes standardization irrelevant, but has another set of disadvantages. > To some extent, this is happening to C++. Microsoft is > going off in their own direction (extra keywords, "managed > C++", ".NET", and now "C#"). Yes and no. They seem to be actively interested in standard C++ as well. > AT&T is no longer a factor in computing. The Linux community > is staying with C. The Linux kernel is staying with C. A number of important Linux applications (Firefox, for example, or Gnome) are written in C++. If someone pretends that C++ will disappear, my first question is: what will replace it? Java tried and failed. Microsoft seems to have admitted very early on that there is a role for both C# and C++. > (That, incidentally, needs to be thoroughly studied by those > working on the C++ standard. It's worth understanding why a > sizable community has looked at and firmly rejected C++.) > Application-level programming is transitioning to other, > safer, languages. For example? There are more than a few things that I don't like about C++, but I don't see any other language (except maybe Ada 95) which is capable of supporting modern, large scale program development. > Issues like this need more attention in the standards > process. This is more important than adding cool features to > templates that very few people will ever use. It's certain that there are some core issues which need attention. The language could be simpler and easier to use (to put it mildly). But until a working alternative comes along, such problems aren't going to kill it. (Also, I think that there are people in the standards committee who are concerned by these problems. Not everyone there is working on cool new template features.) -- James Kanze GABI Software Conseils en informatique orient�e objet/ Beratung in objektorientierter Datenverarbeitung 9 place S�mard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'�cole, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34 --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. 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